DioSC: St. Andrews Mt. Pleasant Votes to Leave TEC

from Stand Firm by Greg Griffith:

St. Andrew's in Mt. Pleasant, the largest parish in the Diocese of South Carolina, just completed its vote on whether to leave the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of South Carolina. Rector Steve Wood writes on his blog:

This morning at 7.15 am the Vestry of St. Andrew’s Church ~ Mt. Pleasant met and unanimously passed the following resolution:

RESOLVED that the resolution unanimously adopted by the Vestry on March 28, 2010 for this church corporation, parish, and congregation to withdraw from and sever all ties with The Episcopal Church in the United States and to transfer its canonical residence to the Anglican Church in North America or another province of the worldwide Anglican Communion be ratified by the members of this church corporation.


The Parish then met in a Special Meeting at 12.15 pm for the purpose of ratifying and concurring with this decision of the Vestry to withdraw from The Episcopal Church.

The preliminary vote results will be posted at the receptionist’s desk in the lobby of the Ministry Center by 2.00 pm, Monday, 29 March 2010. The certified results will be posted at the same location by 3.00 pm, 2 April 2010, for a period of one week.

I will offer a bit of commentary tomorrow once the preliminary vote results are made known.

St. Andrew's is taking extensive measures to ensure the validity of the process. Wood adds:

Due to the nature of the process we are undertaking it is necessary that certain objective standards/criteria are met. So, for instance, the parish mailing we did two weeks ago was printed, assembled and mailed (with day/time stamp photo accompaniment) by an outside mailing house. Similarly today we have secured a professional parliamentarian to preside at our parish meeting, and, we have secured an accounting firm to distribute, collect and validate each ballot cast.